I'm Still Searching for the Ants Invasion: Notes on Phase IV

 I hope that insect doesn't see me / He's not renowned for his courtesy [1]

 

 

I.

 

There are numerous films in the so-called bug genre, some of which involve swarms of killer bees and many of which involve armies of soldier ants on the march. I will always remember Michael Cain battling the former in the The Swarm (1978) and Charlton Heston taking on the latter in The Naked Jungle (1954).

 

Arguably, Hollywood's fascination with insects and the possibility that they might one day threaten human existence, culminates in The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971), a strange but fascinating movie which combines elements of documentary, science fiction, and horror, and features a variety of insects, including wasps, locusts, termites, and even butterflies. [2]  

But the film I wish to discuss here, however, is another odd work, which, whilst little-known today, has nevertheless achieved cult status ...

 

 

II.

 

Directed by graphic visual designer Saul Bass, Phase IV (1974) is perhaps the most philosophically-informed and arty of all ant movies. One reviewer described it as "designed more than directed, and edited around principles of color and line, rather than around performance or plot" [3]. 

 

Whilst, essentially, it remains a six-legged sci-fi horror, it's certainly a very different kind of film to Them! (1954); for one thing, the ants aren't giant-sized, even if they are supposed to be super-intelligent, and they are revealed as sophisticated creatures capable of great feats of engineering and heroic acts of self-sacrifice.         

 

When I first saw Phase IV as a child, I found it boring and incomprehensible; second only to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odessey (1968) in that respect. Unfortunately for Paramount Pictures, that was pretty much how everyone else also felt at the time - moviegoers and critics alike - and the film was a box office flop [4].

 

However, 45-odd years later, I now find much to admire about the film; not least its low-key anti-humanism and the luminous screen presence of 20-year-old English beauty Lynne Frederick as Kendra Eldridge, a traumatised survivor of an earlier ant attack whose destiny is to become a kind of human ant queen. [5].

 

The plot is actually fairly straightforward: a mysterious cosmic event causes ants to undergo rapid evolution and develop a collective cross-species intelligence. One of the results of this is that they begin building huge towering nests in the Arizona desert, disconcerting the local human population who decide to vacate the area.

 

A two-man scientific team - Hubbs and Lesko (played by Nigel Davenport and Michael Murphy respectively) - arrives to investigate. But they soon find themselves having to battle against the ants for survival. Things, however, take a fascinating turn when it transpires that, far from wishing to simply exterminate humanity, the ants wish to remake us in their own image and absorb mankind into their alien new world order [6]         

 

Some viewers will, obviously, object strongly to such a prospect. But I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords ... [7]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from the song 'Ants Invasion', by Adam Ant and Marco Pirroni, on the album Kings of the Wild Frontier, (CBS, 1980). Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group. Click here to listen on YouTube. 

[2] Regrettably, I've not had the opportunity to watch this film in its entirety. But it comes highly recommended by Mr. Tim Pendry, whose knowledge and critical judgement in this area - as in many others - I respect and trust. It's interesting to note that Ken Middleham, who shot the insect sequences for The Hellstrom Chronicle, also shot the ant close-ups for Phase IV.

[3] Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, 'Saul Bass directed only one feature - and it's about super-intelligent ants, The A.V. Club (31 Oct 2014): click here.

[4] Unfortunate, too, for Saul Bass, as he was never again invited to direct a feature-length film. 

 

[5] Despite only being twenty years of age, Bass was concerned that Frederick looked too mature for the role she was playing. Thus, he obliged her to wear a specially designed (and extremely uncomfortable) corset to flatten her breasts and attempted to persuade the beautiful starlet to restrict her diet to chicken broth and black coffee for the duration of the production.  

[6] Bass originally shot a surreal montage with which to end the movie, indicating what the future ant-dominated world might look like. Sadly, this was cut by the studio executives at Paramount. However, it has recently been rediscovered and is available to watch on YouTube: click here.

 

[7] This much-loved line was spoken by Springfield news anchor Kent Brockman, in the classic season 5 episode of The Simpsons entitled 'Deep Space Homer' (1994), dir. Carlos Baezer and written by David Mirkin: click here. Despite what some mistakenly believe, it was not originally spoken by Joan Collins in the film Empire of the Ants (1977).  

 

 

Bonus: to watch the official trailer for Phase IV, click here. Or to watch an excellent modernized trailer, edited by Dan McBride, click here. 

 

For a sister post anticipating this one - on ants with artificially enhanced cuticles - click here.  

 

Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones

The Lovers of Valdaro 

Image: Dagmar Hollmann / Wikimedia Commons

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

 

 

I. 

 

New York based German artist Heide Hatry has recently been posting a series of images on her Icons in Ash Instagram account showing the exhumed skeletal remains of lovers who had been buried together for what they probably imagined would be all eternity, including the pair shown above discovered by archaeologists at a Neolithic tomb in San Giorgio, near Mantua, Italy, in 2007.

 

The Lovers of Valdaro, as they are known, are believed to have been no older than 20 years of age when buried, approximately 6,000 years ago, with arms wrapped tenderly around one another. Osteological examination revealed no evidence of a particularly violent death (no fractures or signs of traumatic injury, for example), so perhaps they died of broken hearts, or having swallowed poison in an amorous suicide pact - who knows?  

 

Anyway, morbid voyeurs who might wish to, can see the skeleton lovers for themselves on permanent display at the National Archaeological Museum of Mantua. 

   

 

II. 

 

Touching as the story of the Valdaro Lovers may be, regular readers of Torpedo the Ark will recall that - for philosophical reasons - I have a real problem with bones. But allow me to summarise these reasons for those readers who are not quite so familiar with the contents of this blog ... 

 

Due to the fact that bones are relatively long lasting, many cultures accord the skeleton - conceived as a noble infrastructure - far greater respect than the soft pathology of the flesh. As Nick Land notes in The Thirst for Annihilation (1992):  

 

"A corpse has one pre-eminent and historically fateful heterogeneous distribution: that between its skeletal structure and its soft tissues. This is apprehended as a difference between what is perdurant, dry, clean, formal, and what is volatile, wet, dirty, and formless."

 

Thus it is that osseological idealists of all varieties - including Christians, Hegelians, and fascists - love bones and skulls, associating these things not only with phallic rigidity, but spirit and intellect, whilst, on the other hand, associating the flesh (and filth) with the feminine. 

 

Unable to face up to the fact that we will all one day decompose and melt into slow putrescence, they posit the skeleton as that which provides figural permanence to human being and marks an acceptable transfiguration of the organic body. 

 

The skeleton is thus the affable mascot of humanist narcissism - reassuring in a way that a rotting, stinking corpse crawling with maggots can never be.       

 

Musical bonus: Dem Bones - aka Dry Bones - is an African-American spiritual song first recorded in 1928. The lyrics, whilst often changing, were inspired by Ezekiel 37:1-14, wherein the prophet visits the Valley of Dry Bones and foretells of the resurrection of the dead: Dem bones, dem bones gonna rise again! Now hear the Word of the Lord! 

      Click here to watch The Delta Rhythm Boys giving us their version, a recording of which can be found on their album Swingin' Spirituals (Coral Records, 1960).     

 

Plastic Ants (There Might Come a Day When They're Treading On You)

Lasius plasticus

 

I. 

 

The world isn't actually going to turn Day-Glo as Poly Styrene predicted [1], but it - and the life that it supports - is going to become progressively plastic at every level, including the molecular, as chemical additives known as phthalates - used to increase the flexibility, transparency, and durability of plastic - are released into the environment at ever greater levels.  

It's not just ourselves we are transforming with these things, even insects, for example are undergoing an artificial metamorphosis, as a study of ants by Alain Lenoir from a few years ago made clear ...

 

II. 

 

Investigating the biochemical process by which the common black ant can differentiate between friends and foes, Dr. Lenoir discovered to his suprise the presence of phthalates alongside hydrocarbons in the creature's protective cuticle. And this was true not just in a few specimens, but all of them.     

 

Other researchers had previously reported such findings, but Lenoir had been sceptical and suspected that the presence of phthalates was due to contamination within the lab. However, he could now see for himself the startling fact that all of the ants that he and his team studied were contaminated with phthalates, no matter where they originated [2]. 

 

Now, whilst there are serious concerns related to the presence of phthalates within living organisms - including us - it's probably too late to worry too much now and, who knows, maybe they'll have some positive evolutionary effect in the long term ... 

 

Maybe, for example, the ants will become a cyborg species with an artificially enhanced exoskeleton - super-ants, if you will, who might end up one day treading on us just as Adam forewarned ... [3]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring here to the classic punk single by X-Ray Spex, 'The Day the World Turned Day-Glo', from the album Germ Free Adolescents (EMI, 1978). Click here to watch the band - fronted by Poly Styrene who wrote the track - perform it on Top of the Pops.

 

[2] To see how widespread the problem of phthalates in ants was, Lenoir and his team tested six-legged subjects from several countries around the world, including Spain, Greece, Morocco, and Egypt. In every case, the ants - which were not believed to have had any direct contact with plastic - tested positive (although in some cases only trace amounts were found). They also tested crickets and bees, just for comparison, and the result was the same.   

 

[3] I'm referring here to the single 'Ant Music', by Adam and the Ants, released from the album Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS, 1980), which contains the wonderful verse: 'Don't tread on an ant, he's done nothing to you / There might come a day when he's treading on you / Don't tread on an ant, you'll end up black and blue / You cut off his head, legs come looking for you'. Click here to watch the official video on YouTube. 

 

For a follow up post to this one - on the prospect of a posthuman world dominated by ants - click here.  

Absolute Zero

Prof. Julian Allwood

cam.ac.uk 

 

We don't need any more talking - just action!

 

 

As I'm sure most readers will know, carbon neutrality refers to that glorious time to come - presently projected to be 2050 in the UK - when we finally achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions and make the radical transition towards a post-carbon economy in which all the major concerns of a modern state - transport, energy, agriculture, and industry - will be sustainable and environmentally friendly.  

 

Unfortunately, such an eco-utopia probaby won't be so great for the majority of people living within it: they'll be poorer, colder, less mobile, less free, and living on a diet of rice and dried insects. 

 

This becomes clear when you read a 2019 report from the UK FIRES consortium entitled Absolute Zero and published by Cambridge University. Authored by Professor Julian Allwood and colleagues, it sets out to answer the question of how Britain might achieve its net zero goal - to which it is legally committed thanks to the Climate Change Act - within 30 years.   

 

The report - which can be read by clicking here - basically says yes to electric cars, trains, heat pumps, and homegrown vegetables, and no to pretty much everything else: from steel and cement to beef and lamb; from aviation and shipping to gas central heating.

 

And you thought life in lockdown was grim! 

 

Well, brace yourself, for this has just been a trial run for what lies ahead: a revolutionary period in which our present lifestyle is abandoned in favour of a model that seems to have been borrowed from the Khmer Rouge ... It's tough, kid, but it's green ...         

 

 

Note: readers interested in this topic might like to watch a 25-minute video on YouTube in which Professor Allwood tries to sell us the notion of absolute zero, arguing that we can still enjoy a good life whilst reducing our energy consumption by 60%, providing, that is, we accept restraints in certain areas - such as what we eat and how we travel - in order to deliver zero emissions and secure a safe future: click here. 

      It's amusing how, on the one hand, Allwood says that the kind of drastic social and economic changes being advocated clearly require public debate, whilst, on the other hand, he insists that we don't need any more talking - just action (a view that all ideological fanatics ultimately subscribe to). 

 

 

Notes on An American Werewolf in London

Nurse Price and David Kessler enjoy a tender moment 

before things get hairy

 

 

Last night, for the first time in a very long time, I watched An American Werewolf in London (written and directed by John Landis, 1981). And whilst it is neither as funny nor as frightening as many once found it to be, I don't begrudge this comic horror the critical and commercial success it enjoyed at the time, or the cult status it has since attained amongst cinephiles [1].

 

For whilst it's not a great film, it is an enjoyable film to watch, with a strong lead performance from David Naughton as David Kessler, the unfortunate American backpacker attacked by a werewolf whilst trekking by moonlight across the Yorkshire Moors [2] with his buddy Jack Goodman (played by Griffin Dunne). 

 

The film also stars Jenny Agutter, as nurse Alex Price, who falls in love with David whilst looking after him in the intensive care unit of the London hospital in which she works. And, as male readers of a certain age will know, Jenny Agutter is the sexiest and most beautiful English actress ever to have graced the screen. It's always a pleasure to see her and my only regret is that it was David, not Alex, who wakes up naked in the wolf enclosure at London Zoo. 

 

Still, you can't have everything you might wish for in a movie, and Landis does offer some erotic compensation in the form of Linzi Drew as Brenda Bristols in the film-within-a-film entitled See You Next Wednesday - a soft-porn movie showing in the seedy Soho cinema that David finds himself in towards the end of the movie [3].

 

Now, whilst Linzi Drew is no Mary Millington, she did have a successful (and varied) career in the UK sex industry during the 1980s, working as a stripper, glamour model, and porn star. She also landed minor roles in a number of other mainstream movies apart from American Werewolf (Ken Russell was something of a fan).

In sum: there's more than enough good things in An American Werewolf in London to justify spending another 97 minutes of your life staring at a screen - and I haven't even mentioned the demonic Nazi stormtroopers that appear in a terrifying dream sequence that the Chapman brothers would've been proud of, or how the film is crucially tied to the question of Jewish identity and feelings of cultural estrangement ... [4] 

 

 

 

 

Notes

[1] An American Werewolf in London was released in August 1981 and grossed $30 million at the US box office and $62 million worldwide (against a budget of $5.8 million). Whilst not every critic loved it - Roger Ebert, for example, found it curiously unfinished - most wrote positive reviews, finding it not just funny and frightening, but an intelligent film also. Particular praise was reserved for Rick Baker's makeup effects used in the transformation scene.  

 

[2] Filming took place in Feb/March, because director John Landis wanted to ensure bad weather. But it took place on location in Wales, not Yorkshire.  

[3] In an interview with Jason Solomons for The Guardan in 2009, Landis says that the title of the porno film was "in the best smutty British tradition", but that really doesn't make any sense (to me at least); was he perhaps thinking of the euphemistic backronym for the word cunt - See You Next Tuesday? Possibly. But it should be noted that the line See You Next Wednesday (usually referring to a fictional film) is a recurring gag in most of his films and that he probably picked it up from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), where it is spoken by Frank Poole's father.

 

[4] There are numerous essays and articles discussing the Jewish aspect of the film: see for example Joshua Rothkopf's 'How "American Werewolf in London" Transformed Horror-Comedy', in Rolling Stone (19 August 2016). According to the author, the film is an allegory of exoticised Jewishness (made monstrous). Click here to read the piece online. For an equally interesting piece by Esther Saks entitled 'What's So Jewish About Werewolves?', and published in the offbeat online Jewish arts and culture magazine Jewcy (31 Oct 2017), click here. 

 

Bonus: to watch the official film trailer on YouTube, click here. 

 

Cum Play With Mellors: On the Sexual Politics of Ejaculation

Faith Holland: Ookie Canvas (detail) [1] 

faithholland.com 

 

 

I. 

 

Readers familiar with D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) will doubtless remember the long and explicit tirade that Mellors delivers when Connie asks him why he married Bertha Coutts. 

 

Detailing his frustrating sexual experience not only with the latter, but also with several other women - some of whom he describes as unresponsive and some of whom he labels lesbian - Mellors also informs Connie of the fact that, in his view, the vagina is the only place in which it is right and proper for a man to ejaculate.

Mellors hates those women who find coitus distasteful and simply lie there waiting for him to finish. And he also hates those women who prefer to actively bring themselves to orgasm after he has already come [2]. But so too does Mellors despise women who love "'every kind of feeling and cuddling and going off [...] except the natural one'" [3]. 

 

That is to say, women who, for example, prefer oral to vaginal sex and "'always make you go off when you're not in the only place you should be, when you go off'" [4].  

 

 

II.            

 

Ultimately, despite his penchant for anal sex, Mellors subscribes to a very conservative model of what constitutes legitimate and fulfilling sexual activity for adults: a heterosexual model which privileges genital penetration and terminates as soon as the man has deposited his semen inside the cunt. Freud would approve. But many men (not to mention many women), might find this model - one which is firmly tied to reproductive function rather than to erotic pleasure divorced from such - rather limited and restrictive [5].

 

Nice as it is to spend oneself inside the female genital tract, some men prefer to splash out in other ways, though it's interesting to ask to what extent this preference has been shaped by contemporary pornographic convention. For as Linda Williams reminds us, whereas earlier porn films occasionally included spectacles of external ejaculation, it wasn't until the 1970s and the rise of hardcore movies that the so-called money shot (i.e. cum shot) assumed "the narrative function of signaling the climax of a genital event" [6] and vouched for the scene's veracity. It has since become a standard feature - arguably to the point of cliché - loved by some, loathed by others [7].    

 

Thus, there's a whole politics involved around the question of when and where to come. Not only have options expanded (both on and off screen) to the point whereby men are encouraged to ejaculate on just about every part of a woman's body, but those who are jizzed-upon are expected to enjoy the experience and find novel ways to erotically play with semen; swallowing it, rubbing it in, forcing their partners to lick it off them, etc.    

 

Just don't tell Oliver (Quick! Let me come inside you) Mellors ... [8]

 

Notes

 

[1] Faith Holland's Ookie Canvases are pictures composed of cum shots sampled from pornography or submission, isolated from their background, colourised, and then collaged together to form an all-over composition.

 

[2] In this post I am using come as the verb and cum to refer to the resulting substance, but there is no established rule governing these spellings.   

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 203.  

 

[4] Ibid.

 

[5] What Mellor's doesn't seem to appreciate is that for a sexually active woman without access to reliable methods of birth control, coitus interruptus is perhaps her best hope of avoiding an unwanted pregnancy when her lover insists on vaginal penetration but refuses to wear a condom. 

      Interestingly, it has been suggested that the cum shot first became popular in hardcore circles only after the actresses decided that ejaculation inside their bodies was risky, inconsiderate, and unnecessary. In other words, it does not signify a secret male desire to visualise ejaculation, nor is it a dark desire to humiliate or degrade women in some manner. See: Joseph W. Slade, Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide, Vol. 2., (Greenwood Press, 2001), pp. 654-56.

[6] Linda Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible", (University of California Press, 1989), p. 93.

 

[7] As one commentator on this tricky (not to mention sticky) subject reminds us, since the '70s anti-porn feminists have often singled out the money shot for particular criticism, though their views have since been challenged by feminists writing from a more sex-positive perspective:

 

"'It is a convention of pornography that the sperm is on her, not in her,' Andrea Dworkin argued in 1993. 'It marks the spot, what he owns and how he owns it. The ejaculation on her is a way of saying (through showing) that she is contaminated with his dirt; that she is dirty.' But, as Lisa Jean Moore points out in Sperm Counts (2007), Dworkin ignores 'that these actresses exhibit pleasure and that it is their pleasure that many of their male partners enjoy. It is perhaps more accurate to theorize that men, both as spectators and actors, want women to want their semen.' In Moore's view, it's not the woman's humiliation, but her enthusiasm, that is so hot." 

      See Maureen O'Connor, 'The Complicated Politics of Where to Come', New York Magazine (13 July, 2015). It can be read online in The Cut by clicking here.   

 

[8] Connie, however, is a different kettle of fish. She has a fetishistic fascination with the male body, particularly the sexual organs, and at one point when admiring the erect penis of her lover, she goes "crawling on her knees on the bed towards him" and puts her arms around his white slender loins, "drawing him to her so that her hanging, swinging breasts touched the tip of the stirring, erect phallos, and caught the drop of moisture". 

      One imagines from this that Connie would be more than happy for Mellors to ejaculate on her tits, thrilling as she does to the feel of precum on her body and, later, the heavy rain in which she frolics naked and holds up her breasts.   

      - D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, op. cit. The line quoted is on p. 210 and the scene referred to in the rain is on p. 221. 

 

Great Moments in Rock 'n' Roll History as Seen on TV: Bowie Performs 'Starman' on Top of the Pops (6 July 1972)

David Bowie performing 'Starman' on Top of the Pops 

(6 July 1972): click here to watch on YouTube

There's a starman waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us 

But he thinks he'd blow our minds

 

 

Blow our minds: isn't that precisely what Bowie did with his seductively camp performance of 'Starman' on Top of the Pops on July 6th, 1972? 

 

But not only did he blow our minds, he also blew away the past and announced the coming of an alien future in which binary oppositions would become increasingly difficult to enforce and seem not just ever more untenable but artificial and restrictive [1].    

 

And it's for this reason that Bowie's performance has to be included in any short series of posts on great moments in rock 'n' roll history that, crucially, also happened to be televised and thereby becoming fixed in the cultural imagination. 

 

For whilst the song, 'Starman', would still be an excellent track with a catchy chorus even if you only ever heard it on the radio [2], it was seeing Bowie on TV looking like the most beautiful man on the planet in his brightly-coloured jumpsuit, spiky red-hair, and painted fingernails, that's key. 

 

Bowie perfectly captures the look of music and the sound of fashion, as Malcolm McLaren would say, and his appearance on Top of the Pops is - just like Elvis's second appearance on The Milton Berle Show in June 1956 - a genuine event (i.e. something that comes unexpectedly from the outside and changes everything). 

 

But whereas Elvis, however, marks the point at which white popular culture becomes black, Bowie signifies the queering of popular culture. 

 

Appearing confident and playful, Bowie drapes his arm around the shoulder of guitarist Mick Ronson and, famously, points directly into the camera lens at one point, not merely engaging with his television audience directly, but seeming to address each one of them individually. 

 

Although Bowie had been on the music scene for a number of years, experimenting with different sounds and different looks, it was this performance that made him a star and a seminal figure for many of those watching him that evening who would later go on to have careers in pop music themselves [3]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Bowie doesn't just challenge sexual and gender binaries; he also, for example, curdles the division between American and British English by using slang terms from the former sung with a London accent. And he makes us think about questions of authenticity and artifice; is he a genuine rock star, or an actor merely playing the role?  

 

[2] 'Starman' was released as a single in April 1972, taken from the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (RCA Records, 1972). The song, which delivers a message of alien salvation to the world's youth, was partly inspired by 'Over the Rainbow' as sung by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939).

      Upon release 'Starman' sold reasonably well and earned some positive reviews, though many thought it simply a space-age novelty record. It was only after Bowie performed it on Top of the Pops that it became a top ten hit and helped propel the album up the charts also. Today, of course, the song is regarded by critics as one of Bowie's greatest.

 

[3] Amongst the many viewers sat at home watching Bowie on Top of the Pops that evening were Adam Ant, Boy George, Gary Numan, Pete Murphy, Ian McCulloch, Morrissey, Robert Smith, and Siouxsie Sioux. They were all immediately placed under his spell and would often recall in later years how this performance was a major turning point in their lives. 

 

 

For another great moment in rock 'n' roll history as seen on TV - Elvis's performance of 'Hound Dog' on The Milton Berle Show (5 June 1956) - click here.    

 

 

Great Moments in Rock 'n' Roll History as Seen on TV: Elvis Performs 'Hound Dog' on The Milton Berle Show (5 June 1956)

Elvis performing 'Hound Dog' on The Milton Berle Show 

(5 June 1956): click here to watch on YouTube

 

I. 

 

If you have even vague intentions of writing an intermittent series of posts on great moments in rock 'n' roll history that also happened to be televised - thereby becoming lodged forever in the cultural memory - then there is really only one moment, one place, and one date to begin: Elvis Presley's sexually-charged (yet clownish) performance of 'Hound Dog' on The Milton Berle Show, June 5th, 1956 ...   

 

 

II.

 

This wasn't Elvis's first appearance on national TV - it wasn't even his first appearance on The Milton Berle Show (that had been two months earlier, on the 3rd of April). But it was his most notorious and the moral uproar provoked by his live performance that evening made him the most divisive figure in American popular culture: loved by teenagers, hated and feared by their parents and other figures of authority, including members of the clergy, the press, and even the FBI [1]. 

 

After the June 5th appearance, things would never be the same again for the then 21-year-old Elvis. Indeed, things would never be the same again for any of us. For no one had seen a performer like Presley before and everything that was to follow in the world of popular music can to some extent be traced back to this moment. 

 

Not that anyone could ever repeat this performance: it was, philosophically speaking, an event, i.e., something that does not make sense according to the rules of the situation, something that is genuinely revolutionary and which changes everything. 

 

But what, it might be asked, is it that makes Elvis's performance that evening so particular? 

 

Well, there are doubtless several factors involved, as even simple events lasting less than three minutes are a complex unfolding of chaos. The choice of song, for example, plays an important part: 'Hound Dog' is a strangely provocative twelve-bar blues number [2], even when sung in a more conventional manner and without Presley's outrageous dance moves and suggestive use of a stand up microphone. 

 

Then there's the fact that Elvis looks so perfect: physically and stylisically. You can look and dress very differently and be equally astonishing, but you can't look or dress any sharper or cleaner than Elvis looks and dresses here.         

Miraculous events - and those charismatic individuals who embody them - are, however, often not accepted as things for which we should all be grateful. Indeed, those who fear change and newness will always react with horror when someone like Elvis comes along. 

 

Thus, we should not be too surprised by the critical reaction which mostly followed a similar line: Elvis lacked any discernible singing or musical ability ... he was a bumping and grinding burlesque performer ... he had dragged popular music into the depths ... he was a crude sexual exhibitionist who incited his teenage audience to riot ... etc., etc.

Unfortunately for his critics, their condemnation only made his fans love him more and by whipping up a storm of controversy they ensured ticket sales for his shows went through the roof and that 'Hound Dog' - released as a single on July 13th - went on to sell ten million copies globally and top the US charts for eleven weeks.

    

 

Notes 

 

[1] Some readers might think I'm making that last bit up about the FBI, but, as a matter of fact, the Bureau kept a fairly extensive file on Elvis, consisting of press cuttings, outraged letters from members of the public, and various other documents. Although never officially under investigation, Presley was regarded by some within the Bureau as a danger to national security, arousing as he did abnormal sexual urges in American youth. Ironically, Elvis regarded J. Edgar Hoover as a hero and even asked President Nixon if he could become an FBI Special Agent. 

 

[2]  'Hound Dog was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Originally recorded by Big Mama Thornton in August 1952, it was released on Peacock Records in February the following year (selling over 500,000 copies). Elvis's version, however, which has a very different feel and differet lyrics, was based on a sanitised send-up of the song by the popular Las Vegas lounge act Freddie Bell and the Bellboys (released in 1955).        

 

Can Anyone be a Sex Pistol?

 Anson Boon / Johnny Rotten

 

 

I. 

 

For whatever reason, I'm still thinking about Danny Boyle's new six-part series based on the story of the Sex Pistols. And the question that keeps returning is this: Can Anson Boon convincingly play the part of Johnny Rotten? 

 

Or is it the case that, in order to truly inhabit a role, an actor needs the same lived experience [1] as the person they are portraying? Ultimately, what is the relationship between acting and authenticity?

II. 

 

Firstly, let me say this: I know why some people think it important that, for example, black actors play black characters on stage and film and that such roles aren't given to white actors wearing theatrical makeup. I understand the issues surrounding blackface and how it has lent itself to racial stereotyping and, indeed, racist caricature and can see why such a practice is now considered offensive (even when there is no wilful malice or disrespect intended by the actor playing the part). 

 

Similarly, I sympathise with disabled actors who time and again see roles for which they would seem to be ideally suited go to able-bodied performers. It seems discriminatory - and probably is discriminatory. For although the performing arts take place in an aesthetic space that is uniquely different to what most people think of as the real world, that space is not entirely separate from the latter and still unfolds within a wider cultural history and a network of power and politics, privilege and prejudice. 

 

As Howard Sherman writes:

 

"If we lived in a society, a country, where everyone was indeed equal in opportunity, then the arguments for paying heed to the realities of race, ethnicity, gender and disability might be concerns that could be set aside. But that's far from the case, and if the arts are to be anything more than a palliative, they must think not just of artifice, but also about the authenticity and context of what they offer to audiences." [2] 

 

Unfortunately, whenever someone points this out they are immediately told that the very essence of acting is people pretending to be what they're not; about performance, persona, and pretence; that it's not about the lived reality of an actor, who is paid to wear a mask not bear their soul or expose their true selves. 

 

However, as Sherman goes on to argue, the it's called acting defence is one that often serves to uphold a state of affars in which too many people have been marginalised and unfairly treated for too long; where the lived experience of those who don't determine the rules of the game - including the rules and conventions of the supposedly liberal world of the arts - has been denigrated or dismissed.      

 

 

III. 

 

Having said that - and this brings us back to Danny Boyle's project and the question I asked at the beginning of this post - one of the key lessons of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was that anyone can be a Sex Pistol, regardless of their background.

 

Why? Because it's all about attitude, rather than authenticity; style and swagger, rather than an identity rooted in one's so-called lived experience. As much as Boyle's castration of the Sex Pistols irritates me - click here - the idea that actors can only play people who are the same as them is clearly absurd. 

 

It can be vexing - I wouldn't say offensive - when posh people attempt to portray working class life, or straight actors play gay characters. But, as Julie Burchill says, "if an actor doesn’t look like he’s making fun of someone, we should trust him to give a part his all - and more credit to him if the part is outside of his experience" [3]. 

 

So, good luck to Anson Boon in his attempt to play Rotten! 

 

And good luck also to Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious and Maisie Williams as Jordan. These bright young thespians may never quite understand what was so phenomenal about the Sex Pistols, but that needn't detract from their performance and, as Burchill also points out, there's a danger in getting too uptight about all this: for such anxiety about casting "is merely the equity branch of the cultural-appropriation asshattery" [4]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This moral-ideological notion - increasingly used to negate objective reality - is one I have italicised throughout this post in order to indicate my own scepticism regarding its legitimacy. For those who are interested, it is discussed at length by Brendan O'Neill in a recent essay entitled 'The tyranny of "lived experience"', Spiked, (19 March, 2021): click here.    

 

[2] Howard Sherman, 'The Frightened Arrogance Behind "It’s Called Acting"', (2 August, 2016): click here. Sherman - an arts administrator, advocate and author - was Interim Director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts (New York), from 2013 - 2017. Although I'm sympathetic to his concerns, I worry that his arguments can be extended in a way that ultimately renders acting - and, indeed, even the imaginative creation of characters by writers - almost impossible. In other words, that a call for political correctness ends in a form of woke puritanism.         

 

[3] and [4] Julie Burchill, 'It’s called acting for a reason', Spiked, (21 August, 2018): click here.

 

The Great Rock 'n' Roll Castration

Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious as portrayed by Anson Boon and Louis Partridge

 

Director Danny Boyle irritated me in 2012 with his ludicrous opening ceremony for the London Olympics, featuring a twenty-minute tribute to the NHS, so when I heard that he was making a six-part TV series about the Sex Pistols (based on Steve Jones's Lonely Boy memoir), I began to prepare for a heavily sentimental take on the story.   

 

But, having now read further details of the project - including who's cast to play Rotten and company - and seen images released from on set, I fear what we are about to be offered is a revision of the past that exchanges sneering nihilism for an uplifting tale of smiling punks in touch with their feelings and struggling to live up to their bad boy image, whilst dealing with issues of abuse, deprivation, and addiction 

 

Even the title of the series - Pistol - speaks of castration; of a band rendered sexless and transformed from cocky young 'erberts with an eye for fashion into sensitive boys crying out for attention and who only wanted to be accepted by society and loved as people.*   

 

Still, as a friend of mine said, you never know; the project might be redeemed by a brilliant script (co-written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Craig Pearce) and some excellent performances from the young cast. I doubt it. But we'll see when the series airs next year.   

 

 

Notes

 

* John Lydon - who has already spoken out against Boyle's project - mocked this idea of poor misunderstood punks on 'Fodderstompf', the closing track of the first Public Image Ltd. album (Virgin Records, 1978): click here.  

 

For a related post to this one in which I discuss the relationship between acting and authenticity and address the question of whether anyone can be a Sex Pistol, click here.